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BP 2.9 Scoping/Wishlist

bp-nouveau Template Pack

@hnla, 2.9 Release Lead, will focus on getting bp-nouveau ready for integration into core this dev cycle. He noted, “bp-nouveau represents a clean break from those older templates, clean markup, new styles new file structure with include files and function files managing components and affords us the opportunity to build a better BP than ever before.”

@hnla encouraged all core devs to have a local install running the plugin version and to reconvene at next meeting for a renewed focus & to air any concerns. He has added the following guides to the project for all who want to contribute:

The major steps to get this project for inclusion are pretty much covered by the milestones but broadly fall into:
1. Core integration: adding the switching mechanism to core admin settings, working out the logic for default selection & some means of registering packs in use.
2. Testing the process for stylesheet building and testing the core files merged to trunk along with possible gruntfile adjustments required.
3. Testing of components by device( mobile/ desktop & browser versions) and testing.
4. Testing Accessibility.

@boonebgorges: “I share Hugo’s belief that the time has come to move beyond bp-legacy, and I think that a new set of templates is critical for the future of the project. I’m going to be working with Hugo over the next few weeks to develop some materials that’ll introduce the rest of the team to the workings of bp-nouveau, as well as more details on a plan for moving toward merge, with the idea of soliciting as much energy and contribution from the broader team as possible.” He will help to get bp-nouveau in for 2.9.

@mercime noted that per her initial a11y audit of bp-nouveau (last year), there were items which needed to be fixed in core first. Edit – Most items have been fixed, there are only a few remaining a11y issues which will affect template pack left in core.

@modemlooper likes the Template Pack UI in admin which he thinks will open up lots of customization … spawning child themes of bp-nouveau.

@dcavins volunteered to help with bp-nouveau. @hnla mentioned his concerns with group creation wanted it more a one step process that we could then paginate if we wanted to but accessing certain meta is hard such as group ID at some points where you need it. @dcavins: “I also have some feelings about group creation. (Like change it to one step then redirect to the new group to setup.)”

@boonebgorges will be working on a summary document about bp-nouveau’s status plus user-facing and developer-oriented features over the next week or so.

BP REST API

@rayisme would like to see where we’re currently at and what we can accomplish in this dev cycle. @boonebgorges responded, “it needs someone to take the lead – there was some initial work done on the Members endpoint but it needs to be seen through.”

BuddyPress.org Redesign

@rayisme: “There are elements I like about both. modemlooper’s orange header + iconfont section and karmatosed’s “Are you a user / developer” section. At first, I didn’t like the orange header, but I like that it’s a little in-your-face.”

@modemlooper‘s design was à la https://jetpack.com/ and said, “the design reboot started because I thought the homepage lacked alot of marketing points.” @karmatosed thought that doing original design is good. She’s happy to noodle some more.

@johnjamesjacoby: “Naturally, I have opinions, but mostly I really want all of y’all to feel like these themes are yours to create/enjoy also. It seems like everyone is still in the “I wonder what this or that might look or feel like” which is totally fine. No rush, no agenda, and if something naturally suddenly clicks into the place, we should head that direction.”

Dev Chat Schedule

This is a friendly reminder that starting Wednesday, March 29, dev chat at the #buddypress channel on Slack.com will be at 19:00 UTC through the end of Daylight Savings Time for both U.S. and Europe.

BuddyPress 2.9 Schedule

@hnla, BP 2.9 Release Lead, looks forward to discussing project scope/focus/tasks with the team on March 22.

Dev Chat Schedule

Daylight Savings Time for the United States started Sunday, March 12, while DST in Europe will begin on March 26. In keeping with schedule adjustments from previous years, following is the schedule of our dev chat till further notice:

BuddyPress.org Redesign

The redesign of BuddyPress.org has been discussed many times over a number of years.

Feb. 22: @modemlooper initiated discussion this year about BuddyPress.org colors, adding a showcase page, work on the product side, among other things. He also posted some screenshots on that day and following days to ask for feedback.

BP Template Pack Meeting

@im4th: will open a new task about the activity post form to summarize what he has in mind so that we can discuss it.

@mercime: Google spreadsheets with screenshots of pages with current UI and how we would address each one of the component pages … then attach images of screens addressed in the next-template-pack for comparison

@hnla: has a draft of basic outline on bpdevel (not for publication at this time).

Use the Github repo Wiki pages for documentation

Review some wireframes made by @karmatosed in 2012 which already have feedback from the community as shown in BP Trac, bpdevel, and Github. We have to decide whether any of those can still be used or whether it would be better to make new wireframes.

Dev Chat, April 27

A new API to manage single items navigation (#6534) @im4th has patch. Dev feedback requested. “The patch is replacing nav arrays with a new class. and make sure the nav is attached to an item ID. The user id for the displayed user nav or the group ID for the current group. Group nav and displayed user nav are separated – meaning there are no more slug collisions.” @boonebgorges and @im4th had a long discussion on the implementation in this Slack log. @im4th and @rayisme have uploaded patches after the meeting.

Dev Chat, May 4

A new API to manage single items navigation (#6534) @boonebgorges will be checking out the progress and at “how much we need to support old ways of reaching into the `bp_nav` and `bp_options_nav` globals and spending some time formalizing the various compatibility breaks with unit tests” Update: @boonebgorges has uploaded a new patch with unit tests.

Audit all DB fetch methods to return integers where appropriate (#6977) @rayisme has patch. Work on this is about 90% done.

bp_send_email function not working with numeric string for $to argument (#7042) Will leave decision of ticket status to @djpaulgibbs.

BuddyPress Embeds for activity, user profiles, groups (#6772) @rayisme requested feedback on the display of the embeds in the template as well as the embeds template. Update: @mercime has posted feedback and @im4th has uploaded revised patch.

Screen notifications settings page (#6712) @rayisme: “I need to refresh #6712. @djpaulgibbs‘ feedback in the ticket was quite helpful for future iterations. I’m not sure if this can make 2.6 or not.”

Use WP page names for BP directory pages headings (#6765) Discussion between @hnla, @johnjamesjacoby, @im4th, and @boonebgorges resulted in the decision that this enhancement would require an migration for existing installations when they upgrade while new installations will get the shorter page names.

BuddyPress Style Modules: @hnla has provided the example one so it’s clear how they work and are formatted etc. at https://github.com/hnla/style-modules/tree/master/members-list-module. Update: A new Style Modules repo has been added to the BuddyPress account at https://github.com/buddypress/style-modules

@boonebgorges noted, “The RL gets a sense at the beginning of the dev cycle what he/she would like to accomplish, as well as what others want and are willing to contribute. Within those parameters, there is likely lots of room for the RL to make decisions about what the focus should be.”

David Cavins will lead BuddyPress 2.6. @dcavins (twitter) has been a member of the BuddyPress Core Team since January 2015. David is a huge fan of the groups component and the collaborative possibilities it offers a community. He also builds acoustic guitars in his adopted hometown of Columbia, Missouri.

Next at bat for BuddyPress 2.7, @mercime has been a member of the BuddyPress Core Team since April 2014. Mercime (twitter) enjoys building sites with an eye on accessibility as well as contributing to open-source projects like BuddyPress, bbPress, and WordPress via trac, codex, forums, theme reviews, and surveys.

BuddyPress 2.6

@dcavins will be setting the release schedule this Wednesday during our dev chat. One of the things he’d love to see are optimizations, like extending “our use of caching to group memberships, for instance.” (#6327). He’d love to get everyone’s feedback on ways to make BP run more lightly, “so please be thinking about your favorite component.”

BuddyPress 2.7

@mercime will share the focus and scope at a later time. In the meantime, @bowe suggested, “a release cycle focused on the community aspects. Bring some lesser known but awesome BP stuff to the forefront and implement some long standing UI/UX improvements and rethinking of what BuddyPress should be in 2016 and onwards.” 🙂

It takes a strong volunteer community to improve the BuddyPress project for each release. Your contributions are most welcome and appreciated!

Open Floor

Hey amazing BuddyPressers :wave: – I come bringing good news. We have 4 themes waiting for theme review for BuddyPress which is unusually high. Unfortunately I also bring bad news and we don’t have enough reviewers anymore to do this without it taking ages for the poor themers. I know you’re all super busy, but if any of you with theme experience want to give us a hand it would be brill!

@bowe is currently working on the outline of the proposed new theme/plugin pages to replace the ones @djpaulgibbs deleted the other week. Let someone know at the #buddypress slack channel when you’ve got something ready Bowe.

3. Audit of Components in BuddyPress Trac

@offereins inquired about other development process ideas which the Lead Developers found useful besides having release leads, like having component maintainers and whether BuddyPress would benefit from the concept. @boonebgorges and @johnjamesjacoby noted the pros and con. @djpaulgibbs opined that BP trac components would probably need some review to see that they’d fit into this kind of model (BP Components e.g. groups would be way too big). @boonebgorges stated, “That would be a good first task for someone interested in making it happen.”Result: @offereins has accepted the task of auditing components listed in BP trac 🙂

This summary includes pertinent developer conversations in Slack before and right after the official chat time last week.

Trac Tickets

Email API and customisation features (#6592) Three hours before dev chat, @boonebgorges and @djpaulgibbs had a long and interesting discussion about the new Email API. Topics covered: standardizing verbs for method names, choosing taxonomy for Email Types to give admins the option of implementing multiple templates, among others. Latest:@djpaulgibbs has since updated the `amazing-emails` branch at https://github.com/paulgibbs/buddypress/

XProfile field database schema (#6350) @johnjamesjacoby will be writing down his vision for improving the xProfile tables.

Groups: Add Profile Fields and Profile Field Groups (#6783) From an enhancement for the Groups component, @im4th has proposed a change in direction to making this a generic component which would work for any object (Members, Groups, and Blogs) in ticket. @im4th consulted with @johnjamesjacoby about the best way forward.

Comment syncing between activity and post comments for Custom Post Types (#6482) @imath and @rayisme deliberated and agreed on adding `bp_activity_type_supports()` which works similar to WP’s `post_type_supports()` function. This would provide some flexibility if/when more features are added to BP activity types in the future.

General Administration

Messaging

A lively brainstorming session arose from a proposal by @johnjamesjacoby to replace the old “social network” association used for the past 8 years. There were slogans, taglines, and observations shared during and even after the chat:

• If we’re going to change it, can we think of it more as a strategic/goal/mission statement—more than just a tag line? ~@dcavins
• Social network” and “in a box” are both icky. Something having to do with “community” is better than “social network”. As for “in a box”, it glosses over the developer-focused flexibility of BP, which IMO is one of its strong points. ~ @boonebgorges
• It (“BP as a platform”) seems technically accurate, and speaks to the breadth of purpose, and I think it’s meaningful to a non-technical audience. I think we have two audiences – network builders and developers – so maybe our branding should have two parts too ~ @boonebgorges

• BuddyPress. Go Social. Build Communities. Create Networks. ~ @mercime
• Enabling Community Platforms ~ @hnla
• Building Blocks for your Community ~ @jjj
• Community toolbox ~ @karmatosed
• Community components you can put together in a very easy and funny way ~@im4th
• A suite of social components for building communities ~ @pollyplummer
• BuddyPress. A developer/professional platform that can scale up to millions of users. ~ @mercime
• BuddyPress: Create your own community space ~ @rayisme
• You have the users, BuddyPress (has) the building blocks to kit out your community to the fullest ~@netweb
• BuddyPress, an online community building kit ~ @robkk

New BudddyPress.org Theme

@johnjamesjacoby noted that the “theme needs a complete revamp and redesign to make it more attractive. I would like for BuddyPress & bbPress to be powered by the same theme, so that they are effectively co-branded as such.” Someone’s going to be tapped to work on the new theme.

If a custom template part is used in theme, then nothing happens because theme compatibility would never include anything in bp-legacy. If they are relying on theme compatibility and bp-legacy then they get the new markup and CSS that we give them.

Users/theme authors will be able to edit their home.php template to support this new feature

More to follow. Odds are, there will be some fast and furious work coming soon.

(#6572) @rayisme introduced a new template part to replace the hardcoded markup used to render a single message item in ticket. Discussion in dev chat then ensued to solve one of the two hard things to do in computer science, naming things . Consensus was reached on the name of the new template part, simply message.php.

Update: Patch has been committed to core.

@since standard not parseable with phpDocumentor 2

(#6576) @since tags throughout the BuddyPress project needs to be revised/updated to parse docs correctly in preparation for developer.buddypress.org.

BuddyCamp Brighton, U.K.

This event was a success based on the feedback from the attendees. Congratulations to @djpaulgibbs and @karmatosed, organizers of the first BuddyCamp in Europe, as well as to all the speakers and presenters!

@im4th has posted about his BuddyCamp experience in français along with his slides at his site.

BuddyPress 2.3.1

New BP Core Team Member

We’re pleased to announce the newest member of the BuddyPress Core Team, @hnla (Hugo Ashmore). He is a long-time BuddyPress core contributor, Forums Moderator, Co-Lead of the BP Codex, completed the new BP companion stylesheets for the Twenty Fifteen and Twenty Fourteen themes in this recent dev cycle, and has many tasks scheduled for this year. Hugo is a freelance frontend developer based in London who enjoys Sunday Roast or Curry. Congratulations @hnla!

New BP Rockstar

We’re happy to share the news that @dimensionmedia (David Bisset) is the newest BP Rockstar. @dimensionmedia has organized the first U.S. BuddyCamp (and second ever after BuddyCamp Vancouver) in 2013 and continued to do so in 2014 and 2015. That makes him a Rockstar in our books! To top it off, @dimensionmedia is one of the founding members of WordCamp Miami and has organized the event for the last six years. Quite amazing, really. Congratulations @dimensionmedia!

You can view the archived livestream for the morning and afternoon BuddyCamp sessions (you need to create a livestream.com account to do so): A.M. sessions – http://livestream.com/accounts/13701773/events/4081950 P.M. sessions – http://livestream.com/accounts/13701773/events/4081959

BuddyPress in WordCamp Lyons, France 2015

@im4th has given a 40-minute grand tour of the “BuddyPress Ocean” last Friday, June 5th, aboard possibly the first ever “floating WordCamp” in Lyons. He has just posted about the event at our BuddyPress.org blog. He has included images, links to his slideshow, and gists for making BuddyPress work for you in different scenarios, among other tidbits.

Check out https://buddypress.org/2015/06/boarding-the-wordcamp-lyon/

#wclyons photos by Manuel Schmalstieg are available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/kinetoskop/sets/72157653729160548

BuddyCamp in Brighton, U.K. 2015

Mark your calendars! The first BuddyCamp outside of North America has been greenlighted. Our very own @DJPaulGibbs and @karmatosed are co-organizers of the first BuddyCamp in the U.K. which will be happening on August 8, 2015 in the beautiful seaside city of Brighton, a 2-hour drive south of London. The calls for speakers and sponsors are now open!

Keep an eye on the BuddyCamp Brighton site as things develop over the coming weeks @ http://brighton.buddycamp.org/2015/